learning a programming language

In school this year one of the subjects that I have is research project where we have to do a big project thing, and for mine I am going to learn a programming language. I have decided to either do java, C++ or python but I would like to know which would be the best to learn the basics of in about ten weeks. If you have suggestions on which would be the best please reply.

I would say java. Its a little less complicated than C++ although they are both really similar, and you can use java for a ton of things. Its a good beginner language.

I gotta agree with you there Sirp.




~Sexy

sirporkrind wrote:I would say java. Its a little less complicated than C++ although they are both really similar, and you can use java for a ton of things. Its a good beginner language.

You're joking, right? Java is one of the most annoying, difficult languages to learn. I made the mistake of trying to learn it with really little programming knowledge and I just gave up since it had some pretty difficult things to grasp. I'm trying again with Python, since it's is apparently one of the more beginner-friendly ones.

(Edit: That doesn't mean it's easy to learn, either.)

I have decided to learn java

Java is a bad choice. IMO. It will be less useful to you later on, if you ever do more coding, as it is the weakest language of those three you mentioned. I think that python is the way to go. It's a very simple language, yet powerful. If you do go with python though, get python 2.4.

saeTan wrote:Java is a bad choice. IMO. It will be less useful to you later on, if you ever do more coding, as it is the weakest language of those three you mentioned. I think that python is the way to go. It's a very simple language, yet powerful. If you do go with python though, get python 2.4.

I hate to say it but I'm disagreeing. Java is a very powerful language, and its what the majority of software developers are looking for today in developers. (Don't forget that Minecraft and all the mods created for it are entirely made from Java.)

With that in mind, Java is fairly tough to learn on your own (at least it was for me), so I'd recommend learning either C++ or Python. Definitely do some research on all three languages, and pick the one that you feel to be most comfortable with.

madscientist032 wrote:

saeTan wrote:Java is a bad choice. IMO. It will be less useful to you later on, if you ever do more coding, as it is the weakest language of those three you mentioned. I think that python is the way to go. It's a very simple language, yet powerful. If you do go with python though, get python 2.4.

I hate to say it but I'm disagreeing. Java is a very powerful language, and its what the majority of software developers are looking for today in developers. (Don't forget that Minecraft and all the mods created for it are entirely made from Java.)

With that in mind, Java is fairly tough to learn on your own (at least it was for me), so I'd recommend learning either C++ or Python. Definitely do some research on all three languages, and pick the one that you feel to be most comfortable with.

Java is, compared to many other languages, inefficient and demanding of resources. Java was an extremely strange choice for Minecraft. The only reason it was used is because Notch is extremely proficient in it, and only knows a little C++. Sure it's impressive, and shows just how much one can do with java, but he has 25-30 years of experience coding, and it's still not the best it could be, as things tend to break every time he adds something to the code.

Edit: To be honest I kinda skimmed over what you wrote, and didn't read he second paragraph. But yeah. That.

saeTan wrote:Java is, compared to many other languages, inefficient and demanding of resources. Java was an extremely strange choice for Minecraft. The only reason it was used is because Notch is extremely proficient in it, and only knows a little C++. Sure it's impressive, and shows just how much one can do with java, but he has 25-30 years of experience coding, and it's still not the best it could be, as things tend to break every time he adds something to the code.

With all due respect, Java, as with any other object-oriented programming language, will always break somewhere whenever you add more code to the program. Larger programs use more code and thus are more likely to have bugs. WIndows 7, which contains C and C++, has billions of lines of code, and every week Microsoft pushes out updates to fix the code that breaks (as well as for security reasons and whatnot). As far as I know, no large program will ever have a perfect coding sequence, at least not in today's world IMO. Updates will always add new code and break existing code.

Simply put, whenever you code, you'll often find yourself going two steps forward and one step back, especially when trying to fix broken code. Trust me.

EDIT: I read your edit above and...yeah. I don't want to have this turn into a flame war or something of that sort.